Grasshoppers wanted to play with the game with 8 subs which we said we would not be doing and would reassess it at half time. Which never materialized as the game only had 10 points in it at half time. I think the weather played a role in the game as it was really hot and humid. The preseason work the boys have done paid dividends in the second half and showed we could go the distance. In the warmup we talked about starting string and playing simple patten rugby and build up as we got into the game. GH got two tries that were clearly not tries but they got away with it. The ref really didn’t take much notice of the new tackle height rules. I thought at times we got a bit frantic on the chase and then on attach tried to force it, we need to learn just to be patient and play pattern rugby and the tries will come.

Overall, the boys had a good game and dealt with the heat really well.

First half.

The game started very flat with very little coms in attack or defence. It was a traditional slow Ealing start which I felt showed in the warmup. Think the heat also played a major factor.   

The set piece was good with scrums dominant from the off and we should have had a number of penalties for wheeling and or breaking up that didn’t go our way.

The lineouts work well and we had the measure of them and also managed to disrupt/steal several of their lineouts

The backs ran some really good lines and broke them a few times. I felt we could have run it wider on a few occasions.

The hammers works well in the first half.

Dicko had some issues with the amount/different calls from player behind him we need to have one voice out back directing the game

We managed to only get penalized 3 times in the first half mainly for holding on. We got caught isolating ourselves or without support. This was then compounded in the second half with a few more pens due to holding on.  

Second half

Good start to the second half the way we should have started the first.

We had some great sustained periods of defence on our line/22 and GH just couldn’t break through.

They got two tries which were clearly not tries but got given one of them was from our kick of and we just never got into the right shape from the kick off.